Keeping Faith
by devovere
Summary: Traveling Woman, Part 11. Sam and Gres try to find their way forward.
1. Month One

_The premise of this series is that Samantha Wildman, designated madonna figure of Voyager, has an interior life. It isn't always pretty._

 _I wasn't a writer, until Mia Cooper said I should be. Warmest thanks to her for opening that door and then beta-ing what emerged through it._

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Month One**

I remember having a plan. I don't really know what I have now, except for Naomi. And Gres, if we can find our way forward. If I still want to, with him.

We are living on Deep Space Nine, in bigger quarters. Gres arranged for them hastily when Voyager returned. We found the place in a bit of a jumble when we arrived; he was on his way to Earth to meet us when his things were moved in.

I still think of them as "his things" even though I remember choosing many of the furnishings and art, even though I am surrounded by our wedding gifts as I move through the rooms. I'm not the same woman he married. Who married him.

With practice, mostly in thrice-weekly counseling sessions - two alone, one with Gres and sometimes Naomi too - I am learning to be comfortable admitting that. The journey changed me, profoundly. Maybe Quarra most of all, but maybe not. Maybe motherhood. Maybe Joe. Maybe just … time.

The counselor says, and Gres agrees, that to find my way forward again, I need to do more than just close doors on the past. She says that was appropriate and necessary when I was ten, eleven, twelve years old. But not now that I am a woman grown, a mother, in a stable environment. I can afford to take the time, risk doing the work and facing the truths necessary to integrate all the Sams I used to be with the one I am now.

I'm unconvinced. I'm not even sure what that means, really. But it sounds like something Joe would want for me. I am willing to try, anyway. For Gres, and for Naomi.

When I say as much in Gres's hearing, he grows frustrated with me. "This is _not for me_ , Sam! If you think we are rebuilding this marriage to satisfy _me_ , to make _me_ happy, then it's all for nothing. It has to be for _you_ , to spring from what _you_ want, what _you_ believe to be true and worth doing."

I sit with that, struggling, digging deep to stay open to his feelings and to comprehend his words. He soon calms, sits with me, waits. I finally look at him. "What if what I believe to be true and worth doing is to love you?"

Hope lights his face, and then he checks himself. "What do you think loving me means?" he asks, cautiously.

I think about it. "Making you happy?" I say in a small, defeated voice. I know it is the wrong answer. He can see that I know that much. He says that is progress.

I still don't know the right answer.

We are living together but sleeping separately. The former we agreed was best for Naomi, to give her and Gres time together day in and day out, to help them build a relationship. The latter is at Gres's request. It hurt, it hurt us both, when he told me. That was the first time we wept together, and the first time I realized that our marriage is in serious trouble.

He said that as much as he has missed being with me, as badly as he wants me, he needs to know that I'm not having sex with him out of duty or obligation, nor trying to rebuild our marriage on sexual intimacy in place of emotional honesty.

I wanted to argue, to defend myself. No - I wanted to _feel able_ to do so. I couldn't. I can't. I knew that first night on Earth that we weren't really connecting. I tried to ... force the connection by sleeping with him. I thought that going through the motions would bring the right feelings in their wake. I was trying to re-enact what we'd had, before Voyager, and I only realized later that the sense of connection I was most remembering was what I'd had with Joe, not what that earlier Sam had had with Gres.

I feel terrible admitting that, even just to myself. Maybe most of all to myself. I plan to try admitting it to my counselor. I feel sick at the thought of admitting it to Gres.

I think this is what they mean by "doing the work." I hate it. It sucks. It hurts. It's exhausting. I don't know when it will be done or what my life will look like by then.


	2. Month Two

**Chapter 2: Month Two**

In one of our joint counseling sessions, I tell the counselor and Gres that what they want me to do feels a lot like what the Quarran doctors did when they mindwiped me. I'm not angry when I say it, but Gres flinches visibly. The counselor just asks me to "say more about that."

I explain - Gres has heard this before - about my mindwiping, how it went deep, down to my earliest, damaged neural networks, took everything but my oldest memories, built new mental programming on top of that. I say this counseling work seems to be aimed at stripping away everything I thought Gres and I had built together, going all the way down to older foundations, and rebuilding from there.

The counselor listens, with that calm and penetrating look of hers. She is watching Gres as I speak, not me. I look over and see him bowed, with his hands over his mouth. The counselor sees me see him and says, "Samantha, is there something you want to say to Gres about that?" He meets my eyes, a silent pleading that makes me want to apologize, take it back, reassure him.

Instead, I take a deep breath and ask, "Gres, how does it make you feel to hear me compare our marriage counseling to a mindwiping?"

His eyes widen and he blurts out, "It makes me feel like shit!"

The counselor leans back in her chair. I've noticed that she does that sometimes when I've made progress, when the balance has shifted and found a new settling point.

Gres has noticed it too. He explodes at her. "Oh, that makes you happy? I have to hear my wife say I'm torturing her and you get to feel self-satisfied with the progress she's making? Fuck you!" He is physically shaking.

The counselor looks at me. "Samantha, did you say that Gres is torturing you?"

"No, I didn't. And that's not what I meant, either."

He wrests himself back under control, shoots an apologetic glance at the counselor.

"OK. I'm sorry for … putting words in your mouth, Sam, and losing my temper. If you didn't mean that this is torture, what did you mean?"

"I meant that it's painful and difficult and it's tearing my world apart."

"That … sounds like torture to me."

"Nobody chooses to be tortured. I'm choosing this."

"Are you, though? Are you sure about that, Samantha? You're not doing this because I want you to, to try to make me happy?"

Now I am getting angry. "I'm sure. I'm not so dependent on you that I have to go through this just to try to keep you. If I didn't want to be here, I'd be gone by now, back on Earth with Naomi and our friends from _Voyager_. I'd be looking for a new posting with Starfleet. I have choices, Gres."

I fall silent and my last words hang in the air. Gres and I lock eyes, and there is admiration and hope in his as well as pain and anger. I am suddenly reminded of Joe Carey, when I told him about my mother. My own anger fades, and I am newly strengthened.

Gres sighs. "I know you do, Sam. Thank you for choosing to stay here and work with me on our marriage. Thank you." He suddenly seems exhausted.


	3. Month Three

**Chapter 3. Month Three**

Things are a little easier between me and Gres. But things are harder for Naomi. On this space station with tens of thousands of people on any given day, she is like a village child come to the big city. It is often overwhelming and sometimes terrifying, and it seems to be getting harder instead of easier.

School is a challenge for her - not academically, but socially. She's never spent so much time with other children her age. She doesn't understand children's culture here, and she doesn't seem to be making friends, which worries me.

She tells me a classmate teased her about her horns. I tell her that children will tease about anything. _It's so minor, compared to_ \- I break off thoughts of the past, ruthlessly. She asks me how long we will have to stay here. "Here in the Alpha Quadrant?" I am being absurd, trying to draw a smile.

She gives me a sullen look. "Here on Deep Space Nine. You know what I meant."

I remind her that her father's job is on this space station. Her expression doesn't change; she didn't consider that an answer. As she turns away at last, though, I see her face crumple.

That night, after Naomi is in bed, I bring a mug of tea to Gres and tell him about the conversation, the teasing, my worries about Naomi. We sit together, mostly in silence, drinking tea. He finally says, "We don't have to stay here."

"Your work, though?" I countered.

"I can seek a new posting. We can look for postings together. We could leave Starfleet, even move to Ktaris."

"You would leave your work for Naomi? Leave Starfleet?"

"I would do anything for Naomi. You must know that, Sam."

I cover his hand with my own. "I do."

Then I say, "We shouldn't make a hasty decision, or leave what we have here just in hopes of landing somewhere better. She will have to make an adjustment no matter where we are. She will have to learn to get along with children her age and to function in high-population areas no matter where we live."

"That's true," he acknowledges. "It's just hard to know she's unhappy." Then he asks the question he's been afraid to ask all along. "Would she be happier without me around?"

I squeeze his hand. "No, Gres. I really don't believe so."

"She still keeps her distance from me." I have noticed this too but had foolishly hoped that perhaps he had not.

"It's early days yet. She's only ever known one parent." I am trying to reassure him. He isn't buying it.

"She may be waiting to see if we're really going to stay together before she lets herself get attached to me." He isn't angry, isn't accusing either of us of anything. He's naming what he thinks he sees, testing the truth of it.

I don't deny it. Can't. "Naomi is perceptive. There is no point in trying to hide things like this from her. But I don't … overshare. I don't talk to her about our marriage. I'm not planting those seeds in her mind." Now I'm the one who needs reassurance.

"I know. I didn't think you were." He squeezes my hand back. Then he says, "I want to take you and Naomi to visit Ktaris. To see my parents and be among Ktarians for a time."

I look at him thoughtfully. "Do you think this would help Naomi?"

"I do. I also think it would help us, as a family, to get away from here for a while. A vacation."

"When?"

"When her school term is over. Next month."

I'm relieved. That gives me time to consider this, and to prepare. I haven't seen his parents since our honeymoon, which we spent on Ktaris. We were on good terms, and I want them to meet their granddaughter. But I have misgivings about how they will react to the changes in me, to our marital strain.

"Can we discuss this with the counselor?" I ask.

"Of course," he says. "I want to." And I go to bed that night thinking he has the same misgivings. But, as it turns out, his are different.

Gres and I are in a joint counseling session, and he is telling me something that our counselor has obviously heard before, but which is news to me.

I hold up my hand, confused, needing to stem the flow of information. "Wait, please, Gres. Back up."

He stops talking and looks at me, an expression of dread on his face.

"During the war, you served on a ship that came under attack. You lost friends. You narrowly escaped injury yourself."

"That's right."

"And you were evacuated from the station and unable to return for months. Then came back to find devastation, atrocity. It was dreadful."

"It was."

"You told me all of that long ago, in letters while we were on _Voyager_."

"I did."

"And now you're telling me that after the war … you got engaged?"

"I thought you were dead. Starfleet had pronounced you all missing, presumed dead. More than a year before the war."

"Yes, I know. I understand. Lots of _Voyager_ crew partners did likewise - mourned and moved on. So you got engaged, but not married? And you're only telling me about it now? I don't understand. What happened?"

" _I didn't move on!_ " His vehemence startles me. I think it startled him, or worse. I look to our counselor for guidance, a reality check. I am deeply confused.

She offers Gres a lifeline. "Gres, can you tell Samantha how the engagement came about?"

He looks helplessly at me. "My parents," he whispers. And then he starts to sob.

The story comes out haltingly, in shreds, and seems to shred his dignity as he tells it.

He had been, as far as anyone knew, widowed for years, and then suffered dislocation, loss, and mortal fear during the war. But he had survived.

His parents came. They brought him back to Ktaris for a month, to recover. But also, as they saw it, to begin a new life; it was time. They introduced him to a Ktarian woman whose fiance had joined the Maquis and been killed by Cardassians in the long lead-up to the Dominion War.

They were both numb with grief and post-traumatic stress. They had similar backgrounds; their families knew each other. She would be willing to follow him back to Deep Space Nine, to support his Starfleet career. It was enough. They went through the engagement ceremony and planned the wedding for their continent's next harvest season, the traditional wedding month.

Gres returned to spend their engagement on Deep Space Nine, while she stayed on Ktaris.

Then word came that _Voyager_ was found, that I was alive, that Naomi existed. He hastily wrote me, our first contact in over three years. His letter said nothing of any of this.

We were tens of thousands of light years away. We had no reasonable hope of getting home for decades yet. His parents pressured him to divorce me, to keep his Ktarian engagement. They wanted him to have a normal life, after so much loss.

He refused. He broke the engagement. It was a costly decision. Two failed engagements for a Ktarian woman left her with dim prospects for a good marriage. His parents lost status, lost connections, along with the engagement gifts that were part of the bride price - years' worth of savings. Worst, they lost their hope of grandchildren, at least any they might see in their lifetime. They were angry with him. He hadn't returned to Ktaris since.

He kept faith with me.

"You kept faith with me," I echo, after a time.

"Yes," he answers.

"... _Why_?" I ask, in blind bewilderment.

He stares at me in disbelief. "Samantha ..." and his hands go to his temples, as if he would tear out his hair, claw at his horns. " _How the fuck can you sit there and ask me that_?"

"But … _I had an affair_. I loved Joe Carey. And it didn't upset you."

"Shit!" he cries. "You _still_ don't get it, do you?"

I'm too stunned to say more than, "Get … _what_?"

"What I've given up for you! For … our careers, our life together! To live the life _you_ planned. I couldn't turn my back on that. On you. Couldn't go back to where I started." He is struggling to form these sentences, and I am struggling to understand what they mean.

"When did I ask you to give up anything? Least of all _for me_?"

"When we fell in love and _you were human_!"

I'm shocked to hear him speak this way. At the Academy, when we were dating, when we were planning to marry, our being of two different species had never been an issue, beyond verifying that we could have children together with fertility assistance. We were Federation citizens training for careers in Starfleet. Beyond that, I'd never thought about it.

"Gres? I've never cared that you aren't human. When did you start caring that I'm not Ktarian?"

"Samantha, you never _had_ to care. I never had that privilege."

"I don't understand what you're talking about. Haven't we always been equals, under the Federation, in our marriage? Have I been ... insensitive about your background? About your culture?"

"When Naomi told you she's getting teased about her horns, how did you react?"

"I - Come on, Gres, that's just kids being stupid. Nobody's been _hurting_ her."

"And that's your bar for our daughter's well-being? If she's not being physically abused, she's fine? Or is it just if she's not being bullied over something that makes her look like _you_?"

"How _dare you_ talk like I'm not protecting my own daughter?!" I was suddenly outraged. "Do you have any idea how many times I almost lost her in the Delta Quadrant? How hard that was to go through alone?"

"No, Sam - I don't! I never will! This is one more way you get to be superior to me! And as soon as I have a concern about her, she's _your_ daughter, not ours? God, do you even hear what you're really saying to me?!"

And with that, he storms out of the room, leaving me alone with the counselor. Hurt. Blindsided. And utterly confused.

After a minute, I look up at our counselor and say, "What just happened?"

She looks at me steadily and replies, simply, "Your husband finally tried to tell you what being a Ktarian in Starfleet means to him."

When that sinks in, my shoulders slump. "I didn't take it very well, did I?"

She shakes her head no.

"Fuck."

That night, Gres doesn't come home after work. I can't go to bed without seeing him. After a long time thinking, I finally fall asleep on the couch in the main room, the lights still on, and am awakened very late by a stumbling noise, a muffled curse. I sit up, rub my eyes, and find him standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, head lowered.

I go to him. He sways and adjusts his grip on the frame. I realize he's been drinking. Then I recognize the smell of Ktarian brandy from our honeymoon. I know it isn't served anywhere on DS9; once in a great while he and the other Ktarian on this station, a shopkeeper, will meet up. That's where he sought refuge tonight.

"Gres. Gres. I'm sorry. Please, look at me. I'm sorry."

He looks at me. The grief on his face, the need … I am cut to the quick with empathy, with guilt.

"I'm sorry," I choke out.

"For?" he asks, in a rough, despairing voice.

"For not … seeing you. Not seeing what it's been like for you. What it's _always_ been like for you, leaving Ktaris, coming here, being with me. I'm sorry. I took it for granted, took _you_ for granted. I'm sorry."

He groans, releases the wall, clutches my shoulders, falls to his knees. With his face pressed to my belly, horns curved against my solar plexus, he mutters, "I never wanted it to be your problem. I'm sorry, too."

After months of talking, and sleeping in separate beds, we go silently to his room. We spend the rest of the night wordlessly forgiving one another.


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

We three are on a ship bound for Ktaris. We have six weeks for the trip, two of which will be spent in space. We may stay longer, depending on our reception and on Naomi. She is excited about the trip and our destination. "Mommy, it will be so funny to be on a planet full of people with Ktarian horns - you'll be the one who looks different there!" Gres was right; she needs this, in a way I perhaps could never have seen myself.

Shipboard life is familiar, even when traveling as a passenger instead of as crew. It feels good to be moving again.

I ponder why that is. After seven years of trying to get home, I would have thought I'd never want to travel again. Maybe I'm finding that journeys agree with me, that I can actually thrive in flux, in limbo.

Joe was good at that, at taking life as it came, while staying true to things - the way a compass down-planet points north even as it is carried around the world.

I also have in Gres an excellent model for staying true to things. I understand better, now, that this is what drew him to Starfleet, in a more innocent era. It is what kept his heart centered on me during our long years apart. I called that faith "costly," that day in the counselor's office, but now I can see that breaking faith would have cost him so much more. Staying true is also what compels him to set me free, if freedom should prove to be my truth in the end. That may look like a contradiction, but where he stands it is all of a piece.

I'm trying to learn to love Gres that way too. I'm learning that if we choose to stay together, we can - we must - write our own story, not borrow someone else's template for life.

I've learned so much that now … I don't know a lot anymore. I know where I am today, and why. But I don't know if I'm staying. I don't know if I will stay in Starfleet. I don't know if Gres and I will stay together; if we will try for another baby.

But I do know one thing. If I ever have a son, he will not be named Nicholas. That was the plan, but I'm beyond that plan now. If Gres agrees, if Anne Carey approves, I will name him Joseph.

I'm living unsure of things now, but I'm sure about what Joe gave me, and what I owe his memory.


End file.
